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LANCASTER, Ohio — Jurors are scheduled to return tomorrow for a third day of deliberations in
the trial of a former Pickerington Central High School star football player charged with raping a
classmate.

Jurors deliberated from about 9 a.m. until about 5:45 today, and for about two hours
yesterday after lawyers delivered closing statements.

Roger L. Lewis Jr. is charged with two counts of rape. He is accused of raping the classmate
when they were seniors, on Dec. 2, 2011, on the couch in another classmate’s basement, and again on
Jan. 6, 2012, in the back seat of the woman’s car while it was parked in a remote section of a
partially built subdivision.

Lewis, who did not take the stand, said they had consensual sex. They had started a secret
sexual relationship when they were freshmen, and she was infatuated with him because he was a
standout wide receiver who was recruited by Ohio State University, said his lawyers, Neil Rosenberg
and Lewis Williams.

The woman, who testified for about six hours, said Lewis sexually assaulted her in their
freshmen and sophomore years but she told no one because she was embarrassed and ashamed. She has
strict parents who expected her to excel in school, not date and to remain a virgin, she said.

The Dispatch does not name victims of sexual abuse unless they agree to be indentified.

She said Lewis, who did not have a driver’s license, asked her for a ride to his friend’s
house on Dec. 2, 2011. She did so and went inside when he asked. He took her wrist and led her
downstairs, where he pinned her to the couch and raped her, she testified.

Earlier in the school year, Lewis had taken her annotated, marked-up copy of “Lord of the
Flies,” which she needed to study for an essay question that would be on the January midterm for
her Advanced Placement English class, she said. He said she could pick it up at his house. She
drove over at about 7:45 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2012. Lewis got into her car and told her to drive to the
Fox Glen subdivision, where they parked outside an vacant house lot.

She did so because she wanted to get her book back and didn’t know what else to do, she said.
Lewis got into the back seat and pulled her by her hair and her shoulders into the back seat, where
he raped her and videotaped it on his cellphone, she said. She said she begged him to erase it.
What would she do, she said she thought, if it wound up on YouTube?

This time, as on Dec. 2, 2011, she said, she struggled and repeatedly told him to stop it.
She reported to high school administrators on Jan. 9 that she had been raped, and they called
police.

Lewis was interviewed on Jan. 10 and Jan. 31. He told investigators that the woman did say ‘
no’ about 15 times in the car, but she said it playfully as part of their sexual role-playing.
Jurors listened to the recorded interviews.

Jurors also heard a recorded phone conversation in which the classmate called Adrian Wilson,
who was in her honors chemistry class in their junior year. The call was on Dec. 15, 2011, 13 days
after the first alleged rape. She talked about Lewis. He kept pursuing her sexually although he had
a girlfriend, and thought that she was “his frickin’ booty call” although she had refused to have
sexual intercourse with him, she told Wilson.

Defense lawyers told jurors that the conversation undercut the credibility of the woman who
said Lewis raped her. County Prosecutor Gregg Marx told jurors not to make too much of it, and that
it was just two high school girls talking.

The woman and Lewis are now 19. She is in college, and has been treated for post-traumatic
stress syndrome and depression. He is not in college.